This is the first of the stories about reluctant ghost-hunter Jacob "Trace" Tracy, his partner Boz, and the mysterious Miss Fairweather. Eventually it will be the first chapter of a novel. The second story, End of the Line has been bought by Baen's Universe and is slated for publication in February, 2008.
For a limited time, I have a signed, illustrated chapbook of this story available through my Etsy shop.
Miss Fairweather’s Chinese manservant showed Trace to the library, which was dark and cavernous, surprisingly masculine. Mounted animals and birds loomed from the gallery, backlit by the skylights and the rose window at the head of the room. A fire helped dispel the gloom, but Trace was careful not to look into any dark corners.
“Miss Fairweather will be with you momentarily,” the Chinese said, bowing. His English was excellent, with British enunciation.
“Thanks,” Trace said, smoothing the broad brim of his hat between his fingers. He hoped he wasn't wasting his time. It was early March, and usually by this time Trace liked to be hitched up with a party of settlers heading for Oregon or San Francisco, but more and more emigrants were taking the railroads, and jobs for guides were getting scarce.
John Jamison, at the Post and General, hadn’t been able to tell him much about Miss Fairweather or what she wanted done. “All I know is she asked for you and she’s got money to burn. She bought that old Mannerson place, one built by the railroad man before he went bust. Renovated the whole thing, but never has anybody in. Doesn’t go out in society. Gets packages from all over the place, though—Paris, Egypt, Greece.”
Trace breathed deep of paper, leather, and glue, the old ache for books welling up in him. Miss Fairweather's books were old and well-used—cracks in the bindings and markers between the pages. He stepped closer to the nearest shelf, squinting in the gloom to read the titles, which were varied and impressive: history, theology, philosphy, medicine. A whole section on spiritualism.
Trace’s mouth curled in distaste. He’d heard of these society ladies playing at séances. He’d even met a couple of tricksters who made a living at them, hosting parties to contact dead relatives, preying like vultures on the emotions of the living. Trace figured if a real dead person ever showed up to one of those productions, the so-called medium would just piss himself, and after that he wouldn’t be so welcome in the fancy parlors.
A light step crossed the threshold, accompanied by the rustling of silk, and Trace turned to see a porcelain doll of a woman crossing the Persian carpet toward him.
He had expected an elderly person, but she was no older than he, and looked younger because of her small stature. She was slim, and pale, and very English, with fair hair swept back in a tight knot. Her gown was the color of midnight, with gray lace as fine as cobwebs at the wrists and throat. Her eyes had all the color and warmth of a November sky.
“Mr. Tracy?” She extended her hand like a man. “I am Sabine Fairweather. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”
Trace grasped her small cold hand, gingerly, conscious of his rough boots, his oilcloth coat over his one good shirt, and the fresh razor scrapes on his chin. “Pleasure, ma’am.”
“Please, be seated.” She indicated one of the big leather chairs, but Trace remained standing while she crossed to a handsome inlaid liquor cabinet. “Would you care for a Scotch?”
“That’d be fine, ma’am,” he said, mildly surprised at being offered liquor by a lady at two in the afternoon.
She poured each of them an inch and gave one to Trace before taking the chair opposite. She had to walk up a small footstool to reach it; once seated her little shoes did not touch the floor. “Mr. Jamison tells me you studied Scripture before the war.”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s right.”
“I take that to mean you are a lettered man?”
“I read and write well enough.” It had been a while since anyone wanted to hire him because he was literate. The Scotch whiskey was wonderful, smooth and smoky, and the thought of sitting in this library in the evenings, with a glass and a book, made his throat ache with envy. “English and Latin, a little French. I picked up some Spanish on the trail, but I don’t write it.”
“How many trips to Oregon have you made?”
“Three. Two to San Francisco.”
“Goodness. Surely returning to your studies would have been an easier life.”
Trace paused. “Studyin don’t put food on the table, ma’am.”
“Forgive me. I was being presumptuous. In England, younger sons often become men of the cloth, because they cannot expect a large inheritance, but may depend upon a modest living from a parsonage.”
Trace shook his head. “No offense taken, ma’am. I’m the oldest one in the family. After the war, and my parents passed on, I had to provide for the younger ones.” That was the simple version of the truth, anyway.
“Mr. Jamison mentioned you have a young sister at St. Stephen’s. Are there others?”
“Just one. He’s grown.” Warrick was a captain at Fort Leavenworth, last Trace had heard. They hadn’t spoken in four years.
“Well, Mr. Tracy, I’m sure you would like to know why Mr. Jamison referred you to me.”
“He said you needed a job done,” Trace said.
“Indeed. I told him I needed a trustworthy man to fetch some property for me. It amounts to a glorified errand, but I need someone of good character, and reasonably intelligent, capable of discretion.”
“Pleased to be at your service, ma’am.” He was more at ease now, and a mite curious. She probably wanted him to retrieve some fancy horse, from Kentucky maybe, so she could claim she’d bred the animal herself.
“I received a letter,” she said, “from the solicitor of an old dear friend of mine, who passed away last year. In her will she made reference to a keepsake she wished me to have, but unfortunately my health prevents me from traveling to retrieve it.”
“How far is it?” Trace didn’t want to get too far away from St. Louis; he still hoped to get on with another wagon train for the year.
“Sikeston, Missouri.” She smiled. “Not far by your standards, perhaps. I can pay you two hundred dollars, half in advance and half upon completion.”
Trace nearly choked on the scotch. Thirty dollars a month was the most he could expect for leading a wagon train, and he usually didn’t get that. His half of two hundred dollars would pay Emma’s board and tuition for another year, square him with the feed store, and give both of them a little pocket money.
He licked his lips. “I’m agreeable, ma’am, so long as you give me the particulars of what I’m bringin back, so I can fix up a wagon if need be.”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. It’s a box. A trinket box, such as we ladies keep things in. I believe I left the letter on my desk, here….” She stepped down from the chair and rustled away across the long carpet, toward the monumental desk under the rose window. She returned with a folded packet, which she held out to Trace. “The particulars, as you say, are in there. Would you care for a cigar?”
“Pardon?” Trace untied the ribbons holding the packet closed and unfolded it on his knee. “No need to go to any trouble, ma’am.” He glanced down at the expensive-looking paper, with a heavy seal on the outside and fine copperplate script on the inside. To whom it may concern… be it herewith known by these… bequeath to Miss Sabine Fairweather….
“Not at all,” Miss Fairweather said, standing at his elbow with a velvet-lined casket in her hands. “They are very fine, I understand. Good tobacco is easily available in the states, much more so than in England.”
Trace glanced into the box and the sharp smell of tobacco teased his nostrils. They were the good kind, from Georgia, better than what he usually smoked for a treat. “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he said, and let her trim the end of the smoke, his eyes falling back to the paper as she turned to the fireplace for a light.
… one rosewood box by description six inches in length by five inches in breadth by five inches in depth….
She was coming back with a small iron salamander in her hand. He raised the cigar for a drag but was slow turning his eyes from the page. To be collected by Miss Fairweather or her appointed agent….
Pain seared the inside of his wrist. He gasped, jerked, dropped the cigar and the papers, smelled flesh and hair burning. Miss Fairweather started back with a cry of dismay.
“Oh my goodness, how could I have been so clumsy? Mr. Tracy, I do so apologize!”
She set the salamander quickly on the hearth and spun back to grasp his palm in her own, pushing back his sleeve to examine the burn. It was short, diagonal just below the butt of his thumb, angry red and hurt like a bastard.
“I am so very sorry. Please, let me call for Min Chan to treat that.” She crossed to the doorway and pulled the bell cord.
“It ain’t nothin, ma’am,” Trace said, annoyed but trying to be gracious in the interest of employment. “I’ve had worse brandin calves.”
“But not at my hand,” she said. “Please, let me fetch some salve. I won’t be a moment.”
She scurried away. Trace got up and paced, shaking his hand, folding back his coat sleeve so the oilcloth wouldn’t rub it. It wasn’t bad, but he knew it would itch and draw later. He picked up the will again and tried to read.
A light step crossed the threshold and he looked up, expecting either Miss Fairweather or the Chinese, but the new visitor was a pretty colored girl in a white apron and cap. She dropped a curtsey. “Can I get you anything, sir?”
“No, I don’t need nothin,” Trace began irritably, and then realized he could see the brass gleam of the doorknob through her apron bib. She smiled at him, oblivious to her own transparent state, while the air leaked out of Trace’s lungs.
This was why he didn’t like being in town too long. Too many old houses, too many buried secrets that wouldn’t stay down. Even the harmless ones, like this slave girl—even those reminded him of sulfur and blood, frozen earth and screaming horses, a black rent in the sky beyond his reach. Reminded him that he was cursed. Rejected.
He pushed the memory to the back of his mind and said, low, “You don’t belong here, spirit.”
She didn’t seem to hear, but then they often didn’t. She stood there smiling, hands twisted in her apron, becoming more transparent with every thud of Trace’s heart, until she was gone.
He took a deep, slow breath, deliberately drawing warm air into his lungs, and shifted gingerly to ease the tension around his groin. His burned wrist scraped against oilcloth.
“Damn it,” he hissed, more embarrassment than pain.
A skirt rustled in the hall, but it was only Miss Fairweather’s blue silk. She came into the room with a small jar in her hands and a bit of white cloth. “I hope you will trust my nursing skills, Mr. Tracy. I make my own salve and I find this to be quite beneficial—why, Mr. Tracy, whatever is the matter? Are you unwell?”
His skin flinched at the sound of her voice—a little too bright, as if she was amused by something. “No ma’am,” he said slowly. “I’d be appreciative of that salve, though.”
She came closer, looking up at him with such avid interest he suddenly wondered if she had expected him to see something. “You weren’t disturbed at all, while I was gone?”
It was crazy—nobody knew: not Jamison, not his family—not the living ones, at any rate—certainly no one who could have told Miss Fairweather. Boz might have had suspicions, if he had believed in such things.
“No,” he said. “Didn’t see a livin soul.”
* * *
“Thanks for passin my name along to Miss Fairweather, Johnny.” Trace slapped a quarter on Jamison’s countertop and helped himself to a bottle of flavored soda from the barrel in front.
“My pleasure,” Jamison said, “but it wasn’t me referred her. She sent that Chinese of hers in here to ask for you.”
“Asked for me by name?”
“Not Jacob Tracy, but he wanted to find the man called ‘Trace.’ She sniffed you out from somewhere else.” Jamison handed him two dimes with a twinkle in his eye. “What’s she look like? Old maid? Crotch-faced old boot?”
“No. Young. Leastways, not older than me. Thin and pale, though, like she’s sickly.” Trace took a thoughtful pull of sarsaparilla. “Boz out back?”
“Yeah, got you all set up.”
“Gimme another of those sodas. Mind if we leave some of that stock here? Just for the week it takes us to get to Sikeston and back. No sense in carting that load for a short trip.”
“No, no, s’fine with me.”
Trace thanked the shop owner and took the open bottle of soda out through the stock room and down the back steps, out to the back yard where Boz was tying packages onto a mule’s back.
Boz was a tough, rangy colored man, tall except when he was standing next to Trace. He’d been a supplies sergeant in the Ninth Cavalry back in the 70’s, and he had fitted out all three of the wagon trains Trace had led to Oregon. Trace had hired him because he could figure better than Trace could, and grew to like him because Boz had a handle on reality like no one else. Boz thought about how things looked, tasted, weighed, and packed. He planned ahead, was rarely caught unprepared, and knew how to fix things when they broke. He worried about nothing more abstract than how long the coffee would last, and whatever his views on God and the devil, he kept them to himself.
Also, he made the best corncakes Trace had ever eaten.
“Might as well stop that,” Trace told him, holding out the soda bottle. “Most of that’s stayin here another week.”
Boz stopped cinching and looked at the mule-pack with irritation, as if he were not surprised to get nearly done and have to undo his work. He wiped the back of his wrist under the brim of his hat and took the soda from Trace’s hand. “Got the job from Miz Fairweather?”
“Yep. She’s payin us two hundred dollars to ride down to Sikeston and back.”
Boz choked on the sarsaparilla. “You’re lyin.”
“Hell I am. She gave me half in advance.” Trace pulled back the lapel of his vest to show the sheaf of bills tucked inside.
“She crazy?”
“Maybe. But I took the job, so what’s that make me?”
“What’d you do to your hand, there?”
“She burned me tryin to light me a cigar.”
“Usually takes women a day or two to come after you with a fire iron.”
Trace grinned. “For another hundred I may bend over and let her brand me.” He quaffed the last of the soda. “Easiest money we’ll make this year, that’s for sure.”
* * *
Trace leapt across a running moat of mud onto the plank sidewalk, but his boots were so slick he almost slid off the other side. He caught onto one of the Sikeston jailhouse’s porch supports, ducked under the roof and shook the rain off his collar before stooping to peer in the window.
“Damnation,” he said, as Boz slid onto the porch beside him.
“What’s it say?”
“Sheriff’s out of town for a trial,” Trace said, reading the sign propped inside the glass. “Won’t be back ‘til Tuesday.”
The prospect of staying in Sikeston for five more days did not appeal. It had rained almost from the moment they had set out on the road, and it was a chill, wintery rain. The ground wasn’t cold enough to freeze, so they just got soaked and numb. They had stabled the horses, out of kindness, but that left them up to their knees in the muddy streets.
“You sure Miz Fairweather said McGillicuddy?”
“Didn’t just say, I saw it printed on the letter. Here! Mister! Father, I mean,” Trace amended as the man on the street tilted his black umbrella to reveal a round hat and a white collar. Trace took off his own hat. “Pardon me, Father…” The older man stopped in the mud, just on the other side of the moat running in the street, and looked up at him calmly. “We’re lookin for a man named McGillicuddy, supposed to be practicin law in this town.”
“I assume you mean the business aspect of law,” the preacher said. “The only lawyer in Sikeston keeps his offices at the printer’s.“
“Beggin your pardon, but we’ve been there, Father. They never heard of him. It’s about the estate of a lady by name of Lisette DuPres—“
“DuPres?” the preacher repeated, and cracked a smile. “She was hardly a lady, but if you’re looking for her estate, it’s over there.” He raised one dripping black wing to point across the street at the saloon, brightly-lit and glowing in the misty gloom.
“I don’t think I catch your drift, Father,” Trace said.
The preacher chuckled. “Son, Madame DuPres was not only a practitioner but a purveyor of the world’s oldest profession. Any assets she left behind would most likely be found in there. And I believe the current proprietor is named McGillicuddy, though I’ve never met him personally. And while I don’t mind standing and chatting with you lads, if I don’t move soon I shall be permanently mired in this spot, so if you wish to continue this conversation—“
“No, no, Father,” Trace said, and tipped his hat. “Sorry to keep you.”
“Not at all,” the priest said, and splashed along his way.
Trace looked at Boz, who shrugged, but there was a gleam of mischief in his eyes. “Maybe Miz Fairweather heard about your former callin and feared you wouldn’t take the job.”
“If that was the case, she was misinformed,” Trace said, and leapt off the porch, mostly clearing the muddy river and wrenching his knee with the effort it took not to skid. Boz followed with slightly more grace and they waded across Main Street to the saloon.
There was another moat to cross before that porch, but since it was a higher-traffic area, someone had thoughtfully laid a couple of boards from the high ground to the first step. The barroom was near to full, despite the weather; it was suppertime and falling dark. Trace supposed most of the men would spend the night there.
“Maybe you better wait here,” Trace said, but Boz snorted.
“I ain’t lettin an innocent like you in there alone,” he said.
Trace allowed a grin and pushed through the swinging doors.
It was lucky Boz was behind him. As soon as he crossed the threshold, something cold and vicious and distinctly feminine sunk its claws into him and shoved. Non! the voice screeched in his head. Non, non, vous n’etes pas bienvenu!
He grabbed for the swinging door but it scraped past his fingernails, and he would have gone down flat if Boz hadn’t caught him and pushed him forward into the saloon. It was like being pushed through a briar hedge but as soon as both feet were through the door he was loose of it. The claws retracted but left the cold feeling behind, his lungs chilled and aching like the time he had slipped in a Colorado river and swallowed half of it.
“You all right?” Boz said.
“Yeah,” he said gruffly, trying to catch his breath.“Just hit a slick spot, there.” He had a stitch in his side, a pain where the old scar was. Some of the faces near the door turned toward him with varying degrees of curiosity and ridicule, but beneath the bright gas lamps and the beaming drunken faces he glimpsed something feral and mad, twisting in the shadows under their eyes and between the chair legs.
“Stay close,” he muttered to Boz.
They made their way to the bar, careful not to step on any toes. Their quarry wasn’t hard to spot: a short, ugly-Irish fellow in a fine hat and a striped vest stood on a stool at the corner of the bar, watching over the room and swinging a short black-lacquered cane. He was surrounded by river hands, all drinking whiskey and laughing at his jokes.
“Evenin,” Trace said, easing his boot onto the brass rail and settling an elbow on the bar. He touched his hat. “I’m lookin for a man name of McGillicuddy. Heard I might find him here.”
The Irishman’s piggy little eyes slid over Boz and settled on Trace with a gleam that offered trouble, if Trace was stupid enough to reach for it. “I’m McGillicuddy. What can I do for yez?”
“It’s a bit of private business,” Trace said. “Don’t suppose we could step into a corner somewheres?”
“Private?” McGillicuddy repeated. “Can’t be anything shameful. I have no secrets, have I, lads?” This last was delivered over his shoulder, with a grin for the river hands, who lifted their glasses and declared their support for good ol’ Gill.
“Suits me,” Trace said, shrugging. “Has to do with the estate of Lisette DuPres….”
“Miss DuPres died more’n a year ago, boyo, and the sheriff’s inquest ruled it a suicide, so if yer nursin a grudge or a broken heart—“
“I was sent here to retrieve some property of hers,” Trace said. “Understand you’re in possession of it.”
“And so I am. Left me the whole damn place, bless her little poxy heart.” McGillicuddy swept his arm toward the ceiling of the saloon. His sleeve pulled free from the white starched cuff, baring a few inches of wrist and a glimpse of something pink and curved, like a brand.
Trace felt an ugly jolt at the sight of it. He looked quickly at Boz to see if he’d noticed, but Boz had pulled his hat low and was trying not to laugh. Boz never did have much patience with dandified town folk.
Trace ran a thumb over the bandage on his own wrist. It didn’t hurt any more, but Miss Fairweather’s salve kept it from crusting over, so he’d kept it covered. “It’s a rosewood box,” he said loudly. “Little bigger than a horseshoe, square. Was told you had the whereabouts of it.”
The laughter stopped as if cut by an axe. The rivermen fell still, and the rest of the room hushed, as well, in the drop of their voices. McGillicuddy clasped his hand over his wrist and stared at them. He had gone quite pale. “Well then,” he said. “Well, then.”
Trace glanced round at Boz. “Is there a draft in here?”
“I felt a chill,” Boz said.
McGillicuddy’s watery eyes fixed on Trace’s face as if trying to see through him. “I don’t believe I caught yer name, friend.”
“Sure you didn’t. It’s Jacob Tracy. And this is John Bosley.”
McGillicuddy looked over Boz with the same scrutiny, and a hint of fear. “Well then. We’re all in the service of the master, ain’t we? Of course I’ll fetch it for ye, ain’t I kept it safe all this time? It’s just I’ll have make the proper preparations, being the time of the moon an’ all.“
“Of course,” Trace said, ignoring Boz’s questioning look. “We’re not in a rush.”
“In the meantime you lads’ll stay on as my guests, won’t yez?” McGillicuddy was rubbing his right wrist between the thumb and forefinger of his left, as if he would twist his hand clean off. “Course I’ll have to see the mark, ye ken, just to be sure….”
Trace hitched up the sleeve of his coat and held out his wrist. The sight of that white bandage made McGillicuddy jump like he’d been goosed.
“It’s still healin,” Trace said.
“Hurts like a bastard, don’t it?” McGillicuddy said through a strained grin. “Even now…. Well, then. Well, ye’ll just have to stay on as my guest, won’t yez? You and yer man, here.” He beckoned to a little red-haired whore near the stairs. “Sadie! Come here, girl…. You lads’ll have to stay close at hand, next couple days, while I make the arrangements—“
“Just don’t let it take too long,” Trace said.
“O’ course, o’course we mustn’t keep Mr. Mereck waitin, eh? Let me buy you lads a drink—“
“That’s mighty hospitable of you,“ Trace said, with a sinking feeling. The last thing he wanted was to get drunk in this place. He needed his wits intact, and when he got too much liquor in him he couldn’t always tell the living from the dead.
Even stone sober he could feel hostility prowling the bar where they stood, sniffing along his boots and collar like a cold draft. Usually the spirits didn’t know where they were or what they were doing, trapped in their own private purgatories and indifferent to the living as they were to the furniture. This one was bitter, hating. And he knew, by that as much as the burn on his wrist, that Miss Fairweather had sent him here with full knowledge of what he would find.
He tried to stop after four shots, but they pressed a fifth and a sixth on him, and by that time the shadows in the barroom were getting thick and dark, swirling like smoke. Cold black tendrils curled around McGillicuddy’s limbs and neck but he didn’t seem to feel them. Trace watched, fascinated, as the black smoke looped around the glass in McGillicuddy’s hand and wrenched it from his grasp.
It didn’t just fall, it shot out of his hand and three feet down the bar, smashing into a bottle the bartender had left sitting. Glass and alcohol flew out in a fine spray. The men sitting close yelped in surprise and then laughed uneasily, pointing out the mess to their friends who had missed it.
“That happen a lot?” Trace asked.
“Barman’s trick,” McGillicuddy said, with false cheer. “Use’to be able t’tip the bottle and make it pour, har har.”
“Think you’ve had enough, boss.” Boz’s hand was heavy on Trace’s shoulder, and Trace took the hint, feigning more wobbliness than he felt as he pushed away from the bar. “Think we’ll take that room now,” he said.
“Surely, surely!” McGillicuddy summoned the red-haired Sadie again. “Take them up to Miss Lisette’s room. She don’t need it, and sure she won’t mind the company, eh?”
Dandy, Trace thought. He had to lean on Boz more than pretense required, to go up the stairs. The black smoke twined around his legs, so he couldn’t see where his feet were landing. He looked up, at the darkness swirling between the dancing and groping couples, and saw a little girl leaning out between the railings of the gallery. She was about five or six, with black curls and a full, pouting mouth. She was so solid Trace wouldn’t have known she was dead except she had no eyes.
“Careful, there,” Boz said, as Trace tripped onto the second floor.
Skinny little Sadie led them to the end of the gallery, where a corridor opened up and turned down the back of the building. “That’s your room,” she said, pointing at the door in the corner, then dropped her arm and scuttled back along the wall a few inches.
“It ain’t gonna bite us, is it?” Boz said.
“N-no. I just don’t like goin by there, that’s all. Miss Lisette died in there.”
Shit. Trace eased off Boz’s support, put a hand on the wall, and approached the door. There was no feeling of cold, nothing pushing him away. The scrolled knob opened easily.
The room was large, and richly furnished. The furniture was rich and comfortable-looking; the curtains at the window and bedposts were wine velvet. There was a large clothes-press, a breakfast table, and a gilt mirror over the dressing table. No signs of violence or decay, not even dust, and somewhat to his surprise, no blood dripping down the walls, no flying furniture, not even a tormented moan.
Boz flipped a coin at Sadie and closed the door in her face.
“What the hell did you get us into?” he asked, in a tone that would have made a prairie wife proud.
“Wish I knew,” Trace said. “I told you what she told me; had to guess I’d say she didn’t tell me everythin straight.”
“All that business with the mark, and servin the master—that’s talk I don’t like at all.”
“Me neither,” Trace said, but not for the same reason. He unwrapped a corner of the bandage and peered at the weeping wound. It looked just the same, a random raw semi-triangular burn on his flesh. “I thought it was just an accident.”
“You’re thinkin she branded you, and sent you here on purpose, cos that little potato bug is expecting a messenger from his boss?”
“’Pears to be the case, don’t it?” Trace eased out of one boot and went to work on the other. The mud was half-dry and still slick, getting all up his sleeves and pant legs despite his best efforts. “Wonder if the hospitality extends to a bath.”
“We passed a water-closet, comin up.” Boz put his hands on his hips and looked around the room. “Miss DuPres must’ve had some money.” He reached out to open a door of the large clothes-press. It was full of gowns and ruffles. “They didn’t clean out all her things.”
“Girls are afraid of this room. McGillicuddy, too. You saw that look he got. Sure bet she died bad, short odds he had something to do with it.”
“Probably haunted,” Boz said, with a sidelong glance Trace pretended not to see.
He never knew whether Boz was humoring or testing him. Once, during a campfire exchange of ghost stories with the drovers on the Trail, Trace had told about the abandoned farmhouse he’d stayed at in Oklahoma, and how he’d heard screams in the gray dawn and woke to find a dead man standing over him—blood running down his face, shrieking and clasping his scalped head. The drovers had laughed, but they did it with a certain unease, and Boz had looked at him speculatively for some time after that.
Boz had little patience with anything he couldn’t see or touch. He viewed preachers with indifference and healers with suspicion, although he allowed that Indian medicine men at least knew some practical things, like how to draw snake venom. Trace figured Boz thought him a touch shell-crazed from the war, or maybe viewed soft-headedness as a common trait among preachers. Trace had never tried to tell him how frequent he saw them. Boz didn’t know about the year in the sanitarium in Richmond, either.
“Flip you for the bed?” Boz offered.
“You can have it,” Trace said.
* * *
He dreamt of the battlefield.
Artillery rent the air and clawed up the dirt around him, but he lay exposed on the bleeding earth, skin flayed off and nerves exposed to every scream and stab and bullet. Horses pawed the air and groaned, dying, legs broken and lungs collapsing. He soaked it all up as the ground did the blood of the fallen; as his life seeped out of him the souls of others bled into him, and he was powerless to help it. His eyes fixed on the graying sky, found an opening in the clouds and he tried to get to it, but his dead and dying comrades dragged at him, crying they couldn’t make it, they hurt too bad, they were missing limbs and heads and torsos and he had to carry them. They were pulling him down, he was skidding and sliding through loose earth into a mass grave, and he thrashed to break free.
The thrashing woke him to a strange bed: soft, perfumed, and a fire blazing on the hearth, which was fortunate because he had not a stitch of clothing on.
Hot, dry, smooth palms landed on his thighs. He jerked, tried to sit up, but he was just as immobilized as he had been on the battlefield. He could see only a silhouette against the firelight—a bright nimbus of long hair, the slim line of a shoulder and hip. Soft laughter touched his ears. The hot smooth fingers slid up his thighs to his groin, lingered a moment, and continued upward to the scar, above his hipbone on the left, which a bayonet had started and the sawbones had finished.
“Vous avez la bonne chance, n’est ce pas?” the voice said, husky and sensual, but with a disturbing guttural quality in the laughter.
“Wouldn’t call it luck,” Trace gasped. Sweet and soft and searing, skin against skin—
“Mais vous avez le vision, non? Vous conversez avec les esprits perdus. Vous pourriez découvrir tous les mysteres de l’universe.” Stroking, stroking, the hot pointed fingers found the seam of his scar and pushed deep into it. He screamed. Scarlet lips peeled back from teeth, grinning while she twisted his guts. “Quel est le problème? Voulez-vous la boîte, ou non?”
Trace jolted awake, twisted in his bedroll on the floor, his scar throbbing as it had not in years. “Jesus,” he muttered, half-prayer, turning on his side to relieve the crushing sensation on his chest.
It was bright morning: late, by the look of the light. The bed was empty, Boz’s boots gone from the hearth. Trace rose on his elbows, rubbed the grit from his eyes. His mouth tasted like brine, the metallic tang of blood.
Someone was humming.
He turned his head, across the room to where the breakfast table sat beneath an eastern window. Pale sunlight slanted in, laying a gilded halo on the sable curls of the little girl who sat there. She was playing tea party, with a doll and two shot glasses, humming happily to herself. She looked up at him with her empty eyes and then toward the door as it opened.
“Bout time you woke up,” Boz said, sliding into the room with a covered plate in his hand. He crossed to the now-empty breakfast table and set down the plate and two steaming mugs. “Sounded like you were bein gutted or rutted, couldn’t tell.”
“Some of both,” Trace grunted, getting his knees under him. His side still hurt, and his neck and shoulders felt kinked. So much for sleeping on the floor to keep the haunts away.
“I found out about our dead lady,” Boz said. He flipped back the flour-sack towel over the plate and uncovered all sorts of good things: cornbread and ham and slices of fried grits.
Trace limped to the table in his longjohns and took up one of the mugs; coffee could save a man’s life, sometimes. “What about her?”
“She owned this place, all right—inherited it from her mama. Pair of ‘em came up from N’Orleans when Miss Lisette was a girl. Miss Lisette run it by herself for about three years after her mama died. Kitchen help says she was a good boss, paid fair, took care of her girls. Business was good. Then a year ago fall, this traveling carny comes through town, had one of those hocus-pocus men with it—what’re they called, when they put you to sleep, but they can still tell you to move around and stuff?”
“Mesmerists.”
“Yeah. Name o’ this one was Mereck. Foreigner. German, maybe.”
“Russian,” Trace said. He didn’t know how he knew that. He drank some more coffee and reached for a slab of cornbread.
“Could be. Anyway, he moves in here with Miss Lisette and the pair of them start up a spiritualist business—tellin fortunes, callin up the dead and such. Got to doin regular performances, twice a week—even the respectable people in town comin to see the show. Fore long, the town preacher comes to visit, objectin to the ghost raisin, but Miss Lisette has Mereck throw him out. Couple weeks later, she turns up dead and he turns up gone. They say he left her and she killed herself.”
Mensonges, whispered a voice near Trace’s ear. Lies.
He shrugged, as if nagged by a mosquito. “McGillicuddy said that name, didn’t he? Last night. ‘Mustn’t keep Mr. Mereck waitin,’ or somethin like that.”
“Think so.”
“Reckon that’s the master he was talkin about.”
“What I thought, too, but the girls downstairs say they didn’t have much to do with each other. McGillicuddy was the bartender here, ‘fore she died. She didn’t leave no will, or if she did they lost it. McGillicuddy just kind of took over the place.”
Trace tucked a piece of fried ham into his cheek and sucked the salt out of it. “Don’t like it,” he muttered. “Don’t like any of it.”
“Hell no. McGillicuddy finds out you ain’t workin for his boss, he’s liable to send those roughs of his after us. I know you don’t like leavin a job unfinished, but this—“
“Don’t like bein lied to, either,” Trace grunted. “Even if McGillicuddy’s got this box, he don’t look willin to hand it over. Fellow acts like the devil’s lookin over his shoulder.”
Boz snorted. “White folks is the devil. Don’t need no red sombitch with a hayfork. No offense to you or your former callin.”
“None taken.” Trace cradled the coffee mug against his chest, pensive. “Still, two hundred dollars….”
“And she came lookin for you, particular,” Boz reminded him. “That’s what Jamison said. Did she say why?”
“No,” Trace said shortly. He stood up. “I’ve got to take a piss.”
Miss DuPres had evidently believed in investing her money in her business; the water closet upstairs had flush toilets and piped-in water. Trace had availed himself of the bathtub the night before, and went there now to do his morning duties.
He knew full well why Miss Fairweather had come looking for him. What he didn’t know was how. He’d told seven people in the last sixteen years, and every one of them was dead. Unless someone at the asylum in Richmond….
But there was another possibility. If she knew what he was, and what he would find here, might not she also be…?
He felt a sudden strong ache of need, far beyond curiosity, a gut-twisting hope that someone else felt what he felt and might understand it—but the hope ran hard into a wall of resentment. He didn’t like being used. Whatever her reasons, she could have told him. If she knew so much about him she should have showed him some respect.
He stood before the bowl, unbuttoned his johnnies, and had just let loose a stream of water when a small voice asked, “Who are you?”
Trace flinched. Hot piss pattered the floor, and then the whole flow just dried up. “Damnation,” he breathed, and cautiously turned his head to see the little dead girl standing behind him. The black pits of her eyesockets seemed to look into the back of her skull. She held her doll by the hair and tilted her head curiously at him.
Just ignore it, he told himself. It’ll go away in a minute; they usually do. Although “usual” didn’t strictly apply to this situation. He’d always had a firm if untested suspicion that they wouldn’t bother him while he was answering nature’s call.
But nature was no longer calling. His genitals had retreated into his fly, which was damned uncomfortable on his bladder. No matter how much control he imposed over his mind and emotions, being brave was not the same as being not scared, and his body insisted on reminding him how near he stood to stark terror.
“Vraiment, you do not work for Mereck, n’est ce pas?” the little girl asked.
He glanced at her again, from the corner of his eye. She was very solid, not transparent at all, and if it weren’t for the crawling of his skin—and pecker—he might not have known she was dead. “I don’t know any Mereck,” he said. “You run along, now.”
“I do not have to leave. It is my house.”
“Who are you, then?” He rebuttoned his johnnies, trying not to think about what he was talking to, figuring he’d go outside and do his business behind the barn.
“Je m’appelle Lisette DuPres, idiot.”
Startled, Trace turned full around, but she was gone.
He finished up and went thoughtfully back to his room—her room. Boz was sitting by the fire, rubbing grease into his boots. Trace dressed without speaking, got into his boots and vest and then fetched his saddlebag from the hearth and opened it on the bed. He ran his hand down the side to retrieve the coil of leather he knew was there; drew out a wide cowhide gunbelt and holster that sheathed a .45 cavalry-model Colt.
Boz said mildly, “Got an appointment I don’t know about?”
Trace wrapped the holster and belt around his hips, cinched it snug. He didn’t usually walk around heeled this close to civilization, but folks were lying to him and this helped even the advantage. “I ain’t quite done here yet. I want to know how Miss Fairweather’s involved in all this.”
“Seems reasonable.”
“You can come with me or not.” Trace swept up his heavy oilcloth coat and settled it over his shoulders. With the coat on, the gun wasn’t obvious, but he felt comforted by its weight—more anchored to reality.
“Where you goin?”
“Church,” Trace said sourly.
* * *
The church was quite small; there were twelve rows of benches in the sanctuary. The tiny cloister at the front had barely enough room for Trace and Boz to crowd in and close the door.
“Hello?” Trace called into the deserted sanctuary.
There was no immediate answer, but a moment later a door opened behind the altar and a man stepped out, the same preacher who had directed them to McGillicuddy’s the night before. He was about sixty, the perfect picture of a priest, lean and dignified with a strong jaw and a thick white shock of hair. Trace took off his hat.
“Well, good morning,” said the preacher. “Did you find your lawyer?”
“Found the man I was lookin for,” Trace said. “The lawyer bit was misrepresented. I wondered if you might have some personal knowledge about Miss DuPres?”
“Ah yes,” the preacher said. “I wondered when you might come to inquire about her. Please, come join me.”
Trace looked at Boz, who shrugged. They followed the man back through the narrow door behind the altar, to find a small living-space. It had a stove and a table and chair. A bed was pushed against the corner, and there were shelves all up the wall across from the stove. The shelves were packed full of books.
“Have a seat,” the preacher invited, gesturing at the bed. “Coffee?”
“Thanks,” Trace said. “So you knew Miss Lisette?”
“I did,” the preacher said, handing each of them a hot tin cup. “Her mother raised her in the faith. They were quite devout, despite the, ah, family business.”
“And you let them attend here?” Boz said.
The preacher gave him a tolerant smile. “Our Lord ministered to prostitutes and lepers.”
Trace wished his own priest had been as charitable. “How old was Miss Lisette, when she died?”
“Twenty, I believe. I never knew her exact age.”
“What did she look like?”
“Very pretty, especially as a child. Black curly hair, green eyes, honey-colored skin. Her mother was a mulatto, and the Negro blood was apparent in Lisette if you knew to look for it.”
That described the child in the saloon perfectly. “What happened to her?” Trace asked quietly.
The preacher gave him a strange look, smiling and warm, as if Trace had made him proud. Trace remembered the look on his own father’s face, when he’d announced he was going to seminary.
“You’re not asking how she died,” the preacher said. “You’ve heard the story, then, of her supposed suicide? Her involvement with the man who called himself Mereck? The séances? Yes. What you may not have heard, is that Lisette DuPres had heard voices from the beyond all her life.”
Trace dropped his coffeecup. “Sh—sorry, Father. Hands still cold.”
“Not to worry.” The priest handed him a towel. “It isn’t a commonly known fact. Lisette didn’t share her gift with people, until Mr. Mereck came along to exploit it.”
Trace, mopping, looked up at him sharply. “You call it a gift?”
“Any natural ability is God-given; what else would it be? Of course, you’re thinking of the Scriptual injuction against consulting soothsayers—“
“’The person who turns after mediums and familiar spirits, to prostitute himself with them, I will set My face against and cut him off from his people,’” Trace said, avoiding Boz’s eye.
“Indeed. And I can’t say I was delighted to have that charlatan fleecing the good people of this town, either, with his hand-flash and jibber-jabber about the secrets of the ages. If there are such secrets, they aren’t meant for mortal ears and eyes. Those things are the dominion of the Lord.”
Boz made a soft noise in his throat; it could have been interest or scorn. The preacher’s eyes shifted toward him. “Your skepticism is a gift, too, friend. It allows you to see things as they are. Pity more people aren’t like you, instead of looking for mesmerists or false priests to lull them to sleep and relieve them of accountability.”
“What do you know about Lisette’s gift?” Trace asked.
“As a girl, she had conversations with many invisible companions. Her mother believed she was seeing angels. I spoke to the child several times, and while I was never convinced her playmates were divine in origin, I found no mischief in her, either. She made no attempts to predict the future or influence people’s actions. In time she realized her gift frightened people and she stopped speaking of it. I never heard of her telling fortunes or consulting spirits for her clients, either, at least not until Mereck found her.
“Once he began exerting his influence over her, she stopped coming to services. I tried to call on to call on her, as I would any member of the flock who went astray, but I was rebuffed. For several months after that she was only seen in Mereck’s company, and near the end she never left the saloon. I began to hear rumors she was ill. A few weeks before her death, I took one of the deacons and his wife with me to the saloon, and insisted on seeing her.
“She came into the barroom, with Mereck hovering nearby. Miss Lisette seemed to shrink beside him. She was obviously unwell, pale, with dark shadows under the eyes. But she came toward me with her hands outstretched and thanked me for coming. She said I mustn’t worry about her, her spiritual training was well in hand and all the mysteries of the universe were being uncovered to her.”
Vous pourriez decouvrir tous les mysteres de l’universe, Trace remembered her saying, in his dream.
“And then she—she pressed herself against me in the most lascivious way imaginable, covering my mouth with hers, holding my head in her hands. The deacon and Mr. Mereck both moved to intervene, and as soon as the Russian touched her she fell away, laughing, clinging to him obscenely… not like a woman at all, even a wanton; more like an animal. I remember she was dressed, but her hair was down and she was quite untidy, like a madwoman. And she had a wound, here on her wrist.” The preacher marked the place on his own arm with one finger. “I saw it when Mereck seized her hands. It looked like it had been carved into her skin, and I thought perhaps she had attempted to harm herself, but when I pointed it out she only laughed and said Mr. Mereck gave it to her. As if it were a love-token.”
The preacher fell silent. Outside in the sanctuary, Trace heard someone come in, banging the front door, whistling, and then the rattling of the stove.
“Deacon Scanlon,” the preacher said, by way of explanation.
Trace nodded, absently. “So Mereck killed her.”
“I believe he did,” the preacher said. “But not with his own hands. She was found dead in her room, Easter morning of last year, throat cut, razor in hand, and a good-bye note from Mr. Mereck on her breast. The servants all swore she had quarreled with Mereck and he had left the premises before she went to bed. Sheriff Brocius ruled it a suicide, and I can’t fault him for it. There was no evidence to the contrary. But I knew Miss Lisette for a number of years, and she was a bright, lively, pious girl. She would never have taken her own life.” He looked at Trace. “You know the Word. What does a mark on the wrist call to mind?”
“Revelation,” Trace said without hesitation. “’And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he exercises all the authority of the first beast, and he causes all to receive a mark on their right hand or their forehead.’”
“Yes,” said the preacher. “That’s what I thought of, too.”
Boz shifted restlessly on the cot. “So where’s McGillicuddy fit into all this?”
“Obviously he profitted from Lisette’s death,” the preacher said. “I suspect Mereck deputized him to carry out the murder, with his reward being ownership of the saloon. Mereck made sure he was well away before her death, so no suspicion could fall on him.”
“Why?” Boz insisted. “What’s in it for him? And what’s this box everybody’s so hot to have?”
“I think,” the preacher said, “evil men are like locusts; they can only stay and feed in one place for so long until the soil is barren to them, and they must move on or starve. But I think they leave seeds in the soil, to lay fallow until the land is ripe for plunder, again.”
Boz sucked his teeth. “Um-hm,” he said, and leaned forward to set his tin cup on the table’s corner. “Thanks for the visit, Padre, but I got to tend to my horse ‘fore we ride out of here, so I’ll say good mornin.”
“Hey,” Trace said, but Boz walked out through the narrow door into the sanctuary. Trace leaned out after him. “Hey! Where you goin?”
“Stables,” Boz said. “Figure on doin somethin useful.”
“You don’t—“ Trace began, but was interrupted by the man arranging hymnals on the front pew, who looked up at the two of them in affronted surprise.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” he said.
“Just talkin with the Father, here, deacon,” Trace said. “We’ll just be—“
“The pastor won’t be back until Thursday,” the deacon said. “That room is off-limits to—“
“It’s all right,” Trace said, “he invited us.”
“Who invited you?”
“The preacher,” Trace said patiently. “Father—what was his name?” He looked at Boz, but Boz was staring past him with a slack-jawed expression. Trace looked over his shoulder.
The room was empty. The bed-slats were naked, the table clear, the stove cold. There was a damp place on the floor beside the bed, where Trace’s feet had rested.
An odd feeling of exaltation swelled Trace’s chest, and he shot a glance at Boz as he said, “Older feller. Snow on top. Long and tall. Green eyes. Dignified-lookin.”
“That’s Father Barrett,” the deacon said, looking like to faint. “He died three months ago.”
* * *
“You all right?” Trace asked after a while, stirring the chaff on the barn floor with his bootheel.
Boz lifted his head from between his knees. His face was darker than usual, from the blood running to his head, but it was an improvement over the ashy color he had been upon leaving the church. “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “Did you know that old fellow was… was—“
“Dead,” Trace supplied helpfully.
“—not real—when we went in there?”
“Nope,” Trace said. “Sometimes I don’t.”
“And they just do that—pop up and talk to you when they feel like it?”
“On occasion. More often they don’t know where they are or who they’re talkin to. It’s like they don’t know they’re dead. They’re just echoin what they did when they were alive. Ones around here seem to have more of an agenda.”
“What did Miss Lisette want, then?”
“You mean Miss Fairweather?”
“No. Dead lady. DuPres. Said you saw her, right?”
“Couple times.” Trace frowned. “Thing is, she keeps changin. Sometimes she’s a little girl, sometimes she’s grown woman, and a crazy one at that.”
“Reckon she was a girl sometime,” Boz said. “Remember the preacher said she was actin crazed, last time he saw her. And this Mereck was supposed to be a mezer—messer—”
“Mesmerist. Ain’t you soundin like a true believer.”
Boz snorted. “I ain’t sayin I believe none of this—but if it’s real, if you think it’s real—hell Trace, I rode cross this country with you ten times, and I don’t think you’re crazy. So I got to treat it like it makes sense, and the sensible thing I see is you go ask Miss Lisette what happened. She was there, wasn’t she?”
Trace recoiled from the idea, a sour taste rising in the back of his throat. “I don’t think I can do that.”
“Why not? We just sat in there talked to some dead holy-man—“
“I can’t help it if they come to me, but I ain’t goin to start callin up spirits and demons—“
“Who said nothin about demons? Just one poor dead crazy lady.”
“’There shall be none among you who practice witchcraft, or interprets omens, or a medium who calls up the dead,’” Trace said savagely. “That’s in the laws for priests—“
“Which you ain’t. Maybe you wanted to be, but the world’s a bitch. And that priest called it a gift—“
“Evil spirits can speak prophecy, too.”
“Christ on a crutch,” Boz hollered. “Don’t it say in your Bible all niggers is cursed? Ain’t you heard the one about Ham’s sons bowin down to white folks cuz Ham’s old man got drunk and left his pecker layin out? Now you tell me you believe that one, I’ll just head back to St. Louis and find myself a new trail-partner.”
“You know I don’t.”
“Damn right. You got the sense God gave you and that’s worth a helluva lot more than what some old smoke-breathers wrote down on hides. So quit feelin sorry for yourself and use that gift to find out what the hell we’re doing here.”
Trace looked up slantwise from under his hat. “You’re startin to sound like my old man.”
“Shit. So what would he want you to do?”
“No need to get personal,” Trace muttered. “All right, goddamn it, but you got to come with me.”
“I ain’t holdin your hand.”
“No, but you can hold the goddamn gun, in case McGillicuddy comes around.”
* * *
They slipped into the saloon through the kitchen, circling around a flock of colored women who squalled at them to get gone. The back stairs up to the second floor were clear. They moved fast but quiet, acting casual, down the hall to the corner room. Trace tested the knob, found it open, swung the door just enough to slip inside and waved Boz through.
Once inside, he took a deep breath, willing himself to calm despite the sick pounding of his heart. He hung his hat on the bedpost and slid out of his coat. “You still got that bottle in your bag?”
“Nerves touchy?” Boz asked, retrieving his saddlebag from the hearth.
“Somethin like.” Trace took the whiskey bottle, unscrewed the cap, and lifted it to his lips. Two long draughts and he was gasping.
“You sure you wanna do that?” Boz said.
“This was your idea,” Trace said, and took another pull. The liquor hit his stomach like hot tar and spread. “Keep by the door. Make sure nobody comes in. And take this.” He pulled the Colt from his hip and passed it over. “In case I’m not in my right mind.”
Boz looked alarmed. “What you think’s gonna happen?”
“I don’t know,” Trace admitted. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doin.” His gaze fell on the breakfast table, with the two empty coffee mugs, and got an idea. He rearranged the dishes, placing a mug before each chair, and poured a small measure of whiskey into the other one. “No, just stay there,” he said, when Boz started forward. “Don’t interfere, and don’t come close or try to talk to us.”
“Us? You—is there somebody there?”
“If you’d quit blabbin for a minute—“
“Sorry.” Boz fell quiet. Trace continued to drink, faster than was good for his stomach. It was near noon, now, and bright outside. The sun was golden on the empty chair opposite him. Trace cast his eye around the room, got up and went to the dressing table, brought back the silver-backed hand mirror and a small round velvet box that proved to be full of jewelry. Aware of Boz’s anxious gaze, he pulled out a tangle of chains, rings, eardrops. Most of it was brass or silver, but here was a pair of garnet earrings that looked like real gold, and a signet ring, sized for a man—
“Those are mine.”
Trace looked up, shoulders tensing despite the whiskey. The little girl sat across from him, empty black eyesockets accusing.
“These are yours?” Trace held up the earrings.
She nodded.
“What about this?” He indicated the signet ring.
“Maman say it belong to my papa. He was the soldier.”
“So was I,” Trace said. “Bayonet almost took my leg off.”
She wrinkled her nose and pointed with her chin at his wrist. “How do you hurt yourself?”
“Burned myself. It was an accident. Do you have a burn there, too?”
She made a queer little rocking motion that made him think she had sat on her hands. “Not now. I took it off.”
“Did Mr. Mereck put it there?”
“I took it off. Mereck left. I tell him to go.” The voice and diction were childish, but the mannerisms, the set of the jaw, were disturbingly adult. Her brow was furrowing, and Trace began to feel violence prickling around the edges of his alcohol-diluted senses.
“Was he angry?”
“He want me to keep his box. I tell him no. I tell him to go. Meurtrier! Mensongeur!” Her face contorted with the force of her shriek, and Trace could see the blackness inside her, all the way down the back of her throat. The childish shape was merely a shell, a vessel for that dark rage.
“Where’s the box now?” He knew he was playing with fire, he sensed the danger in provoking this thing, but he knew her hostility was not toward him. He felt again that odd exaltation he’d felt in the church, equated it with the surge of power he’d tasted as a student, the few times he’d stood before a congregation and raised their hearts and voices in worship.
A crafty look crossed the child’s face. “Vous comprenez,” she said, baring her teeth in a grin. “You know how it feels… si bon…si doux….” She ran her hands over her arms and throat, gurgling with pleasure. “I could teach you… show you. Le maître, he say you need a spirit guide—I could show you tous les mysteres—”
“Of the universe, yeah, I heard. I’m only interested in the one mystery, thanks.”
“La boîte damnable! Idiot! You want to be the dog, the slave for this witch?”
“I’m nobody’s slave and neither are you. Mereck lied to you, didn’t he? Did he betray you? Didn’t that Irishman help him?”
She clawed at her throat, mouth agape, wailing. “Meurtrier….”
Despite himself, Trace’s heart filled with pity. Evil men left their seeds in the soil, and watered them with the blood of innocents. Although perhaps the flesh of the less-than-innocent yielded a better crop, ripe as it was for corruption. “The Irishman’s got the box, doesn’t he? Where’d he put it?”
There was a sudden rattle at the door. Trace’s attention jerked toward it, Boz flung out an arm to hold it closed, and a heavy charge of menace swelled the air. All the hair on Trace’s arms stood up.
“Mister Tracy!” called McGillicuddy’s voice from the hallway, and the breakfast table trembled under Trace’s hands. Lisette raked her nails down her face, grinning and drooling black rage down her chin.
“I show you,” she cooed. “Show you la puissance— “
There was heavy thud on the outside of the door. Boz set his shoulder against it, but a violent shove threw him into the center of the room. The door swung wide and struck the wall.
The apparition flew apart into a murder of black smoke. Trace stood up but staggered; either he was drunker than he’d thought or talking to that spirit had taken the juice out of him.
“Well then.” McGillicuddy’s brogue rolled across the threshold, but the man himself did not; he stood in the hall and rocked on his heels while five of his boys pushed into the room. Boz moved quick; only Trace saw him tuck the Colt into the back of his trousers before he lifted both hands in surrender. One of the rivermen, gun in hand, sidled up to Boz and pulled his pistol from its holster.
“Well then,” McGillicuddy said again, as another of the boys leveled a shotgun on Trace’s midsection. “Seems we had a wee misunderstanding last night, eh?”
“Did we?” Trace said. He had dropped back into his seat. One of the rivermen came close and lifted Trace’s right arm from the table, stripped the bandage off. They all looked at the burn on Trace’s wrist, but McGillicuddy came no closer.
“Aye, seems we did. Else why would yer man here be askin questions of my staff this morning, eh? About me an Mr. Mereck?”
The table vibrated under Trace’s hands. He glanced down at it, saw threads of black swirling around the dishes and streaking the sunlight on the other chair.
“Mr. Mereck knows I’m a loyal servant—ha’n’t I kept his treasure safe all these months? Didn’t I pledge with my own flesh? He told me he’d send for it one day, but that day ha’n’t come, and you aren’t the one, boyo. So what I want to know, lad, is who sent yez?”
The blackness was spilling across the carpet, over and around the men’s boots, gathering near the doorway and piling into a seething malignant thunderhead. It shadowed McGillicuddy’s face, but he didn’t seem to notice it.
“Took five of you to come ask me that?” Trace said.
McGillicuddy bared his teeth. “I take no shame in having the advantage. Particularly not against a man of your stature.”
The table gave a violent heave, tossing dishes and jewelry into the air. The man with the shotgun startled back and Trace grabbed for the whiskey bottle before it could all spill out.
They all froze, round-eyed, staring at him. “No sense in wasting it,” Trace said, and took a strong pull. “Okay, honey, now you can have it.”
The breakfast table tipped up and flung itself at the man with the shotgun. The blast went up and over Trace’s head, peppered the man standing behind him. Trace dropped out of the chair to his knees, heard gunshots and saw the man near the door double over, clutching his stomach with bloody fingers. Colt in hand, Boz grabbed McGillicuddy and yanked him into the room, where he fell on all fours, skidding in the rug.
“Get down!” Trace yelled, and Boz crouched to his heels just as the logs in the fireplace exploded. Sparks and cinders flew over their heads and pummeled the other rivermen. One of them was driven into the wall, another lunged for the door and made it out, the third took a clip on the shoulder and fell against the dressing table. Swearing, he straightened up and leveled his gun on Boz.
Trace clouted him over the head with the whiskey bottle, and down he went.
“What in the hell—” Boz said into the following silence. He still had his hand on McGillicuddy’s collar, and the little Irishman was panting, wheezing, clawing at his throat and the buttons on his shirt.
“Stop that,” Trace said, crossing the floor and hunkering down. “Quit your blubberin and tell me where that box—“
“AAARRRGGGHH!” McGillicuddy screamed, his face going purple. He reared backwards, on his knees, and Trace saw the black smoke surge up his chest and pour into his open mouth. He batted with his hands but the blackness swirled around them, undeterred.
The front of his shirt bloomed bright red. He clutched at his guts, which were heaving and roiling beneath his shirt like the belly of a horse about to foal. McGillicuddy screamed again, and Boz backed sharply away, hand held out as if to ward away the sight before his eyes.
Buttons popped off like bullets. The fabric parted across McGillicuddy’s straining gut, revealing a small hard shape like a fist, pressing the skin from the inside, and the ropy edges of a long scar splitting like leather before the strain.
Something ripped out of the Irishman’s belly and shot across the room, striking the wall beside the window before it dropped to the floor and rolled a few inches back across the rug. They followed its flight, stiff with horror, and behind them McGillicuddy made a repulsive gurgling sound and flopped forward onto his face. A gush of blood poured from the wound, and wisps of black smoke rose up from it, eddied away across the floor.
“Faithful,” he croaked. “Master….”
A red bubble grew swelled between his lips, and burst. He settled limp into the carpet.
Trace looked at Boz, saw the whites of his eyes all around; his own vision was starry and wet. He looked around the room, at three dead men and two more wounded, and a small black object on the floor near the hearth.
“Is that it?” Boz’s voice seemed to be coming from a great distance.
Trace staggered and stooped to grasp it. The coating of blood and grease squished under his fingers and he had a brief, horrific idea that it was the Irishman’s heart.
But no. It was a wooden box, egg-shaped and stained dark.
Voila, Lisette murmured in his ear. I am the good servant, non?
“Let’s get out of here,” Trace said.
* * *
It was about the size of Trace’s fist, with a rough pattern of crescents and triangles carved all over. It had hinges, what looked like ordinary brass under the seal, and a latch. The opening seam was coated thickly with some white waxy substance.
Trace didn’t like handling it. It felt warm, even after he had washed it under the pump in the chill March air. He held it in a dishtowel cradle between his knees, sitting on a hay bale opposite Boz.
“You got to be some kind of sick pup to let somebody sew somethin up in your guts,” Boz said, not for the first time.
“Guess Miss Lisette wasn’t that crazy,” Trace said. “She told me she refused to keep it for him. Told him to get out. So he killed her, found somebody else. Somebody dumber and greedier.”
“What you suppose Miz Fairweather….” Boz began, and stopped.
“Don’t know.” Trace folded the towel over the box, wrapped it around, and stood to stash it in his saddle pack. “Don’t care. Don’t plan to ask.”
“You just gonna hand it over?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
The look on Boz’s face made him flinch. He stared at Trace as if he were a stranger, and a crazy one at that. “These folks are killin each other over that thing. You don’t know nothin about Miz Fairweather except she’s a liar—she’s probably bad as the rest of them—”
“You think I don’t know that?” Trace snapped. “I ain’t stupid, and that’s why we’re gonna hand it over and not say a word about where it was or how we got it.” He snugged his bedroll down over the saddle skirt and turned to face his friend, keeping a hand on the horse’s flank. “If we don’t, how long you think we got before one of them comes lookin for it?”
* * *
“How marvelous,” Miss Fairweather said when Trace put the box into her hands. “I knew you were the right man for the job, Mr. Tracy. How absolutely marvelous.” She turned it over and over, tracing the wax seal with her fingertips. “You didn’t try to open it.”
“Ain’t my business what’s in it,” he said. “Just my job to fetch it back.”
“I knew you were the right man,” she murmured. “Your payment is on the table beside the door.”
Trace figured that was the right direction for him to be heading. There was a paper envelope on the small reception table, and he picked it up, thumbed through the bills inside, and tucked it into his vest pocket. And he hesitated.
He thought later he should have just taken that money and walked out, but maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. She'd found him the first time. He turned and looked back at her, dainty and pale as a china doll, absorbing her treasure through eyes and fingers as if he’d already left the room.
“How did you know I was the right man?” he asked.
The fingers stilled, and the cold blue eyes flicked toward him, measured him for a moment. “Spirits are drawn to those who can see them. I’ve been watching them cluster about you for months. The only difficulty was learning your name and how to find you.”
Her tone was light, offhand, almost bored, but her words made Trace’s gut tighten. Nothing he’d seen in Sikeston—hell, nothing he’d seen since the war—had felt as dangerous as this tiny Englishwoman.
She watched his reaction with interest. “Does Mr. Bosley know?”
“He does now,” Trace said shortly. “Everyone else I told is dead.”
“How very interesting.”
“If you—“ he stopped, all but choking on questions, and not at all sure he wanted to know the answers. All he could think of was Lisette’s voice asking Do you want to be a dog for that witch? “If you can see them, why didn’t you go yourself?”
“I cannot see them.” Her smile was mocking. “Not as you do, at any rate. My gifts are of a different persuasion. Besides, I could hardly visit an establishment of that ilk, now could I?”
“Don’t suppose so,” Trace said. “The name ‘Mereck’ mean anything to you?”
Her hands tightened on the box. He couldn’t tell if the flare of her nostrils was anger or fear, but the compression of her lips was annoyance. “Indeed it does, Mr. Tracy. And again I thank you for your services. I shall send word via Mr. Jamison if I have need of you again.”
“Ma’am,” Trace lifted his hat, “it’ll be a cold day in hell.”
He let himself out of her house. The sun was out, melting the last patches of snow in the low places. Tufts of green stood up and waved from the mud. Trace patted the envelope in his breast pocket and went to find Boz.
Will that be the end of our hero's involvement with the mysterious bluestocking? Does a vampire bat drink carrot juice? Be sure to hunt down our next installment, when Trace & Boz find themselves trapped in a boxcar with a tasty group of Baptist missionaries. Look for End of the Line at Baen's Universe, February, 2008!
Some of the “modern” things Trace encounters are not as modern as you may think. Others existed, just not in the form we know today. This story is set in 1880, and St. Louis was a modern city of the time.
Bottle closings:
www.blm.gov/historic_bottles/closures.htm#Beverage%20Bottle%20Closures
Yes, carbonated soft drinks were sold prior to the Civil War!
Indoor plumbing: www.victoriancrapper.com/
Okay, I’m stretching on the likelihood of plumbing in the whorehouse, but it was possible.
Buffalo soldiers: www.imh.org/imh/buf/buf1.html
and The Buffalo Soldiers, by William H. Leckie, Red River Press, 1967.
Sikeston population 1880= 191 per the U.S. Census Bureau.
Sikeston history: http://sikestondepot.org/